Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak on this bill, the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Country of Origin) Bill 2016. Before I was elected to parliament, I spent a good part of two decades involved in the design, manufacture and marketing of consumer products, and I can assure you that country-of-origin representations are a most important part of that process. If we are able to label something 'Made in Australia', it carries extra weight. Consumers, I believe, are prepared to pay a higher price for goods with that 'Made in Australia' label. Conversely, with other products, especially food products, where someone sees 'Made in China' on a food product, they would be less prepared to pay a higher price. That is a competitive advantage that our nation has—and it has come at a cost. It has come at the cost of the regulations and inspection processes that we have had in place over decades. The 'Made in Australia' name and label are trusted by consumers and they will pay more for them. Conversely, in China we have seen food product scares and health risks. We saw the melamine contamination of baby powder. Because China has not had that regulation in place, it pays the price of country-of-origin representation. Therefore, it is very important that, if the market is to work as effectively as it possibly can, we ensure that we have regulations in place that guarantee those representations are correct—and for many decades we simply have not.

I can remember a few years ago, when the Labor Party were in government and we were trying to get something done on this issue, that Coles put out a product in their select range, a tin of pineapple. It carried the Coles name, which, of course, portrays an Australian company. The label on the tin was brightly coloured in green and gold, the Australian colours. It had a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl on the front of the label saying how wonderful the pineapple product was, again giving that suggestion that it had something to do with Australia. But, when you picked up the tin, turned it around and used a magnifying glass, you found that the product was actually made in Indonesia. That was so close to the wire of being a misrepresentation, and it gave a perfect example of why the coalition government needed to act in this place. The laws have allowed that you could label a food product as 'made in Australia from local and imported ingredients'. This is a completely ambiguous term that means nothing, but, worse, it is terms like that that can hide countries of origin, the products of which consumers would pay less for.

That is why I am pleased to rise to support this bill. It amends the Australian Consumer Law—schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010—to alter the definition of what is called 'substantial transformation' as it applies to the safe harbours provisions of the act. The bill simplifies the tests to justify a country-of-origin claim of 'Made in' by clarifying what 'substantial transformation' means by removing the 50 per cent production cost tests. Previously, it was a simple 50 per cent production cost. So, if you added value of 50 per cent, for example by packaging or by labelling, you were able to claim the product was made in Australia without true substantial transformation of the product. That is what this bill addresses.

Another reason why this bill is so important is that we have to protect our nation's competitive advantage. It has been very hard fought for. If we are to have a prosperous society and be able to provide health and education—all those costs of government—we can only do it if our nation has competitive advantages over other nations, and of course one of those advantages is in our food-labelling area. If a product is made in Australia, that is a competitive advantage. But, so often, we have seen that speakers from the Labor Party and from the other side of parliament either are slow to protect our competitive advantage or actively undermine it. That is why I am pleased it took the coalition to fix up our labelling laws where Labor failed to do so.

Also when it comes to our competitive advantage, contrast Labor's actions in the area of the cost of energy. On this side of the parliament, the coalition have set a renewable energy target, and the Minister for the Environment and Energy has admitted today in a piece in The Australian that this will cost each household $55 extra on their electricity bill. This will put us at a slight competitive disadvantage. But, if we look at Labor's plans for a 50 per cent renewable energy target, Bloomberg New Energy Finance has run the numbers. It has put Labor's plan at $48 billion. That is $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the country and represents $8,000 extra cost for every household of four. That is putting our nation at a competitive disadvantage that undermines everything that we are trying to do to create wealth in this nation and provide the social services that we need. We have seen Queensland's 50 per cent renewable energy target and the Queensland government boasting that this would have no cost for consumers and create no competitive disadvantage. The Grattan report last week blew that out of the water. The Grattan report said it is an 'economic illusion' to pretend it would have no price impact. These are things we need to guard like treasures. Our competitive advantage is a national treasure that we should protect with everything we have, and to see members of the Labor Party undermine it time after time is a disgrace. When it comes to maintaining and sustaining a competitive advantage, it was wonderful to see, when it came to the backpacker tax, that the Labor Party were out there saying, 'Oh, we have to have our tax rates internationally competitive.' That was absolutely right.

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